The library was silent. Too silent.
Elias blinked at the page in front of him. A textbook on economics, half-highlighted, coffee-stained. His eyelids drooped. Another night wasted, another exam tomorrow.
Pathetic, he thought. Is this really my life?
That's when he heard it—
a whisper that did not belong in his crumbling apartment.
[System Initialization…]
[Searching for candidate…]
[Candidate located. Synchronizing soul fragment.]
Elias shot upright, his chair nearly collapsing beneath him.
"What the—? Who's there?"
The whisper grew louder, clearer, until it thundered inside his skull.
[You have been chosen.]
[Designation: The Archivist.]
[Task: Record all worlds. Fail, and cease to exist.]
His desk trembled. The cheap lamp flickered. The textbook in front of him… burned. Not with fire, but with light, pages turning to golden ash.
When the glow faded, it was no longer a textbook at all.
A black tome lay before him, bound in leather that pulsed like it was alive. Its cover was blank. Completely empty.
"…What is this?" Elias whispered. His fingers brushed the surface, and words immediately bled across the cover in ink that wrote itself:
The Archivist's Tome
His vision blurred. A panel appeared before his eyes.
[ARCHIVE SYSTEM ONLINE]
Name: Elias
Rank: Mortal
Permissions: Restricted
Quill: Not acquired
Worlds Recorded: 0
His breath caught in his throat.
"A… system? No way. This has to be a dream."
But then the whisper returned, colder this time.
[Begin recording.]
[A world is collapsing. Enter, or be erased.]
The room shattered.
Walls, ceiling, floor—all dissolved into pages that scattered like feathers. The world he knew was gone.
And Elias fell… straight into the first story.